The Machine To Be Another

This work is an Open Source art investigation into the relationship between identity and empathy that was developed based on low budget experiments with Virtual Body Extension.Designed as an interactive performance installation, the ‘Machine’ offers users the possibility of interacting with a piece of another person’s life story by seeing themselves in the body of the other person and listening to the thoughts inside his/her mind.The artists’ approach involves designing interactive experiments in collaboration with ‘real people’ (volunteers, such as artists, activists, and audience members of the cultural centers). The main interest of this approach is to use the ‘Machine’ as a tool to promote empathy among individuals from different social, cultural and ideological contexts.This interactive performance-installation is built in two identical spaces: one for the user and another for the performer.Through immersive goggles (head-mounted displays), the user sees a video from the visual perspective of a different person (the performer).The user can move and interact with objects inside a room, while listening to the performer‘s thoughts through a set of headphones.